The Passing of a Sparrow
by Kanna37
Summary: He'll go to hell, alright - but you won't. He'll be taking a one-way trip by himself - because you've already been reincarnated into me - meaning that once you go, our soul will come back to me." Kagome lets a few home truths wake Kikyou up to reality.


**The Passing of a Sparrow**

A/N: I do not own the characters of Inuyasha.

-oOo-

The battle-lines were already drawn: Kikyou and Inuyasha on one side, and Kagome on the other.

A tense silence echoed in the clearing with all the force of an avalanche as the three within its confines took stock of the situation.

One of them, at least, had hoped it would never come to this.

"Why are you here, Kagome?" the pale, beautiful woman dressed in white and red asked solemnly.

Kagome was silent for several seconds as that question dropped with leaden clumsiness into the silence, the sound of Kikyou's voice disappearing almost instantly as Kagome finally looked over to the reason that they were in that clearing to start with...

Inuyasha.

He didn't meet her gaze, looking at his feet, a guilty, pained expression mocking the green and white clad woman still contemplating him.

Finally, she answered.

"Because I am as much a part of this as either of you are, Kikyou - and you're priestess enough to know what I'm talking about." She said it confidently, knowing that she was right, and Kikyou was taken aback for a moment - where was the once-frightened girl-child?

There was no sign of her in the woman standing before them.

At that, Inuyasha finally dredged up his voice and spoke for the first time since Kagome had entered the clearing.

"Kagome, you need to go. This is between Kikyou and I... you weren't there fifty years ago, and you shouldn't be _here_ now," he said, still unable to look her in the eye, hating that he was hurting one of the women he loved, but unable to change it.

It was his turn to be surprised, when, at his words, Kagome actually laughed merrily.

"Really? Then how is it that Kikyou calls me her reincarnation? My soul was there then, just as it is now. In fact, I was _there_, just as much as she is _here_."

She shook her head, honestly amused, and laughed again at Kikyou's frown.

With a sigh, she stepped forward, and gestured to Kikyou, still looking at Inuyasha.

"Have you not yet realized, Inuyasha? Even after all this time?" At her soft, almost pitying tone, he snapped his gaze up to look at her as Kikyou's frown deepened.

"What the hell are you talking about, K'gome?"

She held his gaze for endless moments, and then nodded sadly before looking away, her eyes inexorably drawn to the magnificent night sky.

"I wonder," she said softly, almost musingly, to herself, her gaze soft and fastened on eternity, "does Kikyou even know what she's doing? What the outcome of her plan to take him to hell will be?"

Kikyou interrupted there as Inuyasha's eyes narrowed, and he tore his gaze from Kagome to look at Kikyou.

"What do you mean, girl?" she asked, for once, no disdain in her voice.

Her question seemed to snap Kagome's mind back to the here and now, and she pulled her eyes from the sky, her gaze sharpening again.

"What's going to happen when you release your hold on your false body, Kikyou? Have you ever even thought about it? If I wasn't here... perhaps your plan to go to hell with Inuyasha would have succeeded. But..." she trailed off, wondering if the elder miko would gather what she was saying.

She should.

"What's she talkin' about, Kikyou?" Inuyasha growled, eyes narrowing suspiciously.

Kikyou did not answer him, instead firing off a question for her newest incarnation.

"Are you telling me what I think you're telling me? Do you really believe what I think you are hinting at, or are you just trying to come between he and I again?" Her voice sharpened in that moment, and she finished roughly, "I died once already for him, girl - you cannot say the same. What do you have to give that is worth more than life?"

As Kagome took in that question, a wave of anger washed over her, and her eyes sparked. Inuyasha, well acquinted with her temper stepped back, his ears snapping back against his head. He decided he was better off staying quiet for now - safer, too.

"So you think that his heart should have a price - and that price is your life? So, you are_ buying _him, I see it now," she mocked. "Use your mind, Kikyou... I know you have one, and from all the times I've heard how _wise_ the 'great priestess Kikyou' was, none of what I'm saying should be that hard for you to grasp." She turned her back on the woman for a moment, clenching her fists and forcibly dragging her temper back under control.

Finally, with a deep breath that didn't keep her from hearing the indignant gasp from her previous incarnation, she turned back and stared at Kikyou.

"First of all, don't ever use the excuse that you died for his sake and that I could never top that again. Once, I'd have fallen for that, but not anymore. Or have you forgotten about the day you were brought back? _I had to die _for you to be reborn into that body. Urasue took my whole soul - I was every bit as dead as the next corpse - until I refused to die and tore myself away from you."

At Inuyasha's startled inhale, she pinned him with an almost injured gaze.

"That's right, Inuyasha... the only thing she's ever been able to hold over me - that she lost her life for you - has been unfair this whole time. Wrong. Because I died, too."

She turned her gaze back on Kikyou, who was staring at her in stunned surprise. It was clear the woman had never taken that into consideration.

"Second, I know I'm right, as well as _you _know I'm right about what's going to happen as soon as you try to drag him to hell. He'll go to hell, alright - but _you _won't. He'll be taking a one-way trip by himself - because you've already been reincarnated into me - meaning that once you go, our soul will come back to _me_."

Inuyasha growled low at that, turning on Kikyou in a heartbeat and pinning her with a red-rimmed gaze.

"Is that true, Kikyou? Is that really the fate you were about to throw me to?" He tilted his head, a look of betrayal settling over his features. "_Why would you do that to me_?" he whispered, pained.

Kikyou looked at him helplessly, and then shook her head, pressing both hands to her temples as she closed her eyes and thought about what Kagome had said.

Kagome stepped over to Inuyasha, placing a calming hand on his arm as he growled again.

"Calm down, Inuyasha. I don't think she did it on purpose - I don't think she'd really thought this whole thing out, that's all. That's why I had to come tonight," she said earnestly. "I didn't want either of you to make such a big mistake."

Inuyasha tensed as she touched him, then he sighed and slumped just a little. Looking at Kikyou again, he shook his head, an almost heartbroken expression visible in his eyes.

"I don't know if I can believe that," he muttered. "it's hard for me to believe that Kikyou, a _trained _miko, didn't know something that an untrained miko did." He glanced at Kagome and shook his head apologetically. "No insult intended, wench - just statin' facts. Somewhere inside, she knew." He frowned, then, and his gaze sharpened on her. "How did you figure something like this out, anyway?"

Kagome folded her arms across her chest and huffed at him in irritation. "It's something that I figured out a long time ago, baka - and then, just to make sure, I asked Kaede. She confirmed that I was right - in fact, she praised me for figuring it out."

At that, Kikyou looked up, catching Kagome's eye. "Kaede confirmed that what you suspected was true?" she asked, a peculiar intensity in her voice, and Kagome's eyes narrowed as she nodded.

"Hai, she did."

The elder miko looked away, then, sadness visible on her face as she looked off into the distance. "I suppose, then... I have to die alone again," she said softly, resignation clear in her voice. "You both were right... Kagome, when you said that I hadn't really thought about this, and hadn't really realized," she glanced almost guiltily at Inuyasha, "and you, Inuyasha, when you said that somewhere, I did indeed, know."

Kagome nodded, not surprised. "Conscious, and unconscious. The two sides of the mind. At any rate... why do you keep talking about dying? You're not really going to die again, Kikyou - you're only trading up."

Both Kikyou and Inuyasha stared at her confusedly, and she laughed at their nearly identical expressions. "Sorry... saying from my time. What I'm saying is that all you'll really be doing is trading that cold, unfeeling shell for a warm, living body," she gestured to herself.

Kikyou's expression morphed to one of astonishment - she'd truly never looked at it that way. "I suppose," she said slowly, "it'll be like going from a sparrow, to an eagle. I am proud to see that I have only gained wisdom and strength... and purpose, as our soul has reincarnated. It is a far better fate than those souls who in fact only degenerate as time passes."

Inuyasha, who'd been silent for a while, just trying to take everything that had been said in, finally spoke again.

"So... this means what, exactly?" he asked, looking levelly at the older miko.

She sobered at that question, and let her gaze run over his features as she considered her answer.

After a few moments, she said, "It means that instead of going to hell alone, you will be living with Kagome - and me. I will always be there, in her... but she is not me, nor will she ever be," she said warningly to the hanyou, "so don't ever look at her and see me. You must see what Kikyou _became_, instead of what she _was_."

His eyes widened as he took in her words, as though he'd just had an epiphany... and he had. He'd never looked at it in that light, and something told him thathe _should have_.

Because it was the absolute truth.

Kagome was her own person - she was what Kikyou _became_ as her soul grew in wisdom and purity. The Kikyou personality was a forerunner of Kagome, Kagome was not a _copy _of Kikyou.

And suddenly, he was at peace with what would happen in this clearing - with the portion of soul still trapped with the golem of clay being reunited with the rest of itself. For the first time since she'd been resurrected into that shell, his mind and heart weren't split between the two.

He loved Kagome - he loved her soul... in any incarnation.

Kikyou nodded as she watched the expressions chase themselves across Inuyasha's face, then looked back at a quietly waiting Kagome, and sighed, feeling light for the first time since she'd been re-awoken.

"It's time - and I'm finally ready." Holding the younger miko's gaze, she asked, "Would you... give us a few moments to say our goodbyes?"

Kagome nodded, silently making her way out of the clearing, knowing that Kikyou would return to her without her presence being necessary within the actual confines of the clearing.

Neither spoke as Kagome left, waiting until she was gone.

Finally, Kikyou spoke. "It seems that the portion of my soul that carried all the wisdom of lessons learned was left behind in Kagome when I was brought back," she said, almost jokingly, and Inuyasha huffed a small laugh.

"Maybe," he said, "but I guess it doesn't really matter anymore."

She shook her head at that. "No... no, it doesn't" she said softly. "Will..." she paused for a minute, looking uncertain, "will you hold me one more time before I go?"

Inuyasha didn't answer, stepping forward to take her into his arms, he let his actions speak for him. She sighed into his chest, relaxing against him almost bonelessly as she let peace fill her and finally ease her troubled heart.

She went between one breath and the next, and Inuyasha felt her go, her form dissolving into light that streaked around him, circling him, almost hugging him - then unfurled and shot from the clearing, heading unerringly towards Kagome.

A silent tear made its way down his cheek as he watched her leave, his soul feeling warm as the light touched him - a warmth that lingered even as her light disappeared, and he sighed, looking up into the heavens.

_The passing of a sparrow, _he thought. _She's like the phoenix - dying from one life, and being re-born into another. I suppose, _he thought wistfully, as his eyes were caught by one brightly shining star, _that there is no better fate._

And his mind went to the beautiful woman waiting for him somewhere just on the other side of a few seconds, and he smiled.

_No... there really is no better fate._

In the next moment, the clearing was once again empty.

-oOo-

A/N: I was sitting here listening to various piano solos, and it got me into a weird mood. This is what happens when I get into a weird mood.

I took the portion about Kagome being dead when Urasue originally called Kikyou back, from the anime - at one point, Kaede is talking about it and points out that Kagome was indeed dead, and should have remained that way, but that somehow, she called herself back to life.

Amber


End file.
